Tuesday, January 5, 2016

Chicago has a presidential contender. But he sure ain’t no Barack Obama

WILSON: Mr. President? Or Mr. Dreamer?

Well,
he did it.

Willie
Wilson, that is. And I’m not referring to the one-time Kansas City Royals
outfielder who also played for a stint with the Chicago Cubs.

YOU
REMEMBER WILLIE. He’s the guy who ran for Chicago mayor and took just enough of
the black voter bloc that Rahm Emanuel finished with less than 50 percent –
forcing the electoral run-off against Jesus Garcia.

Wilson,
the guy who took a South Side McDonald’s franchise and turned it into a
personal fortune and a business that makes medical supplies, said way back last summer he was going to run for president in this year’s election cycle.

We
laughed. Yet on Monday, Wilson was one of two Democrats (Hillary Clinton is the
other) who filed the nominating petitions with the Illinois State Board of
Elections to get himself a spot on the Democratic ballot for the March 15
primary in this state.

Monday
was the first day for filing petitions and candidates have until Friday to do
so. So we may still hear from Bernie Sanders and the other Democratic clowns
who have dreams of succeeding Barack Obama as president.

BUT
WILLIE WILSON beat them all to the punch. While we were focusing on Hillary and
the way Bernie felt the need to dis Rahm Emanuel, Wilson managed to get
signatures of support on nominating petitions.

Admittedly,
Hillary or her allies could decide to challenge his petitions to try to get him
knocked off the ballot. But for now, he will be in the mix. We in Illinois will
have to start acknowledging his presence – which I’m sure provides the massive
ego boost that I’m sure is his ultimate motive for wanting to run for office.

CLINTON: How soon will she try to dump Willie?

In
that regard, he’s nothing more than Donald Trump. Running for office gives him
a jolt – and a chance to give a kick in the pants to those political people who
peeve him.

Of
course, there’s a reason Wilson’s presidential campaign efforts have received
so little attention – he’s not campaigning anywhere else.

AS
OF THE way things are shaping up now, he will be on the ballot in Illinois in
March, and nowhere else. Nobody else in the United States will have the chance
to even think of casting ballots for him.

Which
I’m sure he doesn’t really care about. He can walk about his South Side home
and have his neighbors point to him as a presidential candidate. He can boast
of a campaign operation centered around a Wacker Drive address downtown.

SANDERS: Will he remain above the fray?

He
may even try to claim he’s the next Barack Obama – offering us the chance to
have a taste of the Sout’ Side (even if Obama’s version is also
heavily-flavored with Polynesian influences) in charge at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.,
N.W.

Although
it takes quite a stretch to make the comparison between the Harvard
Law-educated Obama and the guy from the Deep South who openly boasts he never
got more than a 7th Grade education (and whose speech definitely
proves that fact).

ACTUALLY,
I’M CURIOUS to see what the official Democratic response to Wilson will be.
Will they let him coast onto the ballot figuring that nobody outside of a few
select wards in Chicago will actually pay attention to him? Or will we get the
hard-core press to drive him off the ballot.

EMANUEL: Will Rahm do Clinton's dirty work?

Let’s
not forget that was the Emanuel campaign’s initial reaction when he filed his
nominating petitions to run for mayor, only to have Rahm and his allies decide
to let him flop on his own. Which did or did not happen – depending on whose
perspective one wants to believe.

Would
it be a Bernie backer, setting aside the idealism they like to tout to play
hard-ball politics with Willie? Or would it be a Clinton supporter who would
want to prevent Wilson from tainting the March 15 ballot in Illinois?

If
so, would Hillary turn to Rahm and his people to swat at the fly that is the
Wilson presidential campaign – perhaps in the way they wish they now had done
back in the 2015 municipal election cycle?

I am a Chicago-area freelance writer who has reported on various political and legal beats. I wrote "Hispanic" issues columns for United Press International, observed up close the Statehouse Scene in Springfield, Ill., the Cook County Board in Chicago and municipal government in places like Calumet City, Ill., and Gary, Ind. For a time, I also wrote about agriculture. Trust me when I say the symbolic stench of partisan politics (particularly when directed against people due to their ethnicity) is far nastier than any odor that could come from a farm animal.